


the beloved body, compass, polestar

by buckstiel



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Character Study, First Kiss, M/M, Post-Movie(s), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 14:51:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5630509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckstiel/pseuds/buckstiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe knows his place in the Resistance, in the galaxy at large--or, at least he thought he did. </p><p>But that was before Jakku. That was before Finn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the beloved body, compass, polestar

**Author's Note:**

> Once I found myself alone in my car in the parking garage after seeing this movie for the first time, I let myself scream into my jacket. Whether or not I ever actually ever stopped screaming is entirely up for debate.
> 
> Shoutout to quidnunc-life and thatspoereyfinn for the beta~
> 
> Title from "A Myth of Devotion" by Louise Glück.

That the Resistance base is ever quiet takes Poe by surprise--but even General Organa needs her couple hours of shuteye, even the droids need to power down before they overheat in the humid D’Qar air that gets so stiflingly still at night. Most of the lights are dimmed to conserve power, and down the hall from his bunk, he spots Ackbar taking the night shift, the big yellow eyes blinking slowly at the radar screen before him. No messages pop up along the bottom of the display. No blip in the shape of the Falcon crosses on the star map. It’s been ten days since Rey and Chewbacca left in search of Luke and fifteen days since Poe has had a decent night’s sleep.

At least, fifteen days since he started counting. There were more before then, but only during the lull in the fighting did he let himself worry about something other than the next move on the chessboard.

The nightmares are concerning, yes, as well as any news of where the First Order has run to, what Kylo Ren has dug from an unwilling head; but the worry, that comes on a regular beat, the fifteen-minute rounds along the abandoned Block 5 that start over again at the mouth of the medical bay.

It’s been eight days since Finn woke up. He’s been kept under observation, Poe’s old jacket hanging on a hook above his cot. Poe was there when he took his first steps four days ago, one shoulder nestled in the crook of his shaking arm, the nurse on Finn’s other side; the prognosis was good. The outlook was good, he keeps reminding himself. A lightsaber to the back is a trauma in itself, but to have it miss all the nerves along the spine? A miracle--that’s what the nurse told Poe once Finn had fallen back asleep, exhausted.

“And how are you holding up, Mr. Ace Pilot?” she had asked him, her grin overshadowed by the knowing raise of her eyebrows.

“Never better,” he said.

The bags under his eyes hint at the truth of it. They’re louder now, a deeper indigo trying to compete with the first splotches of twilight after sunset. They enunciate a little better, too, muttering about a dark glove with reaching fingers. A hushed medbay with a sheet-covered cot being wheeled away, or gleaming white plastic under a desert sun immobile next to a smoking TIE fighter. And the glove again.

And again.

 

* * *

 

 

In the light of day, the glove is easier to smirk at: it’s paler over Jessika’s shoulder, next to her jet black hair tied up to hide her bed head, and the din of the cafeteria at breakfast is enough to warp its shape to what it really is. A shadow of a bygone day, the imprint of a hand that’s parsecs away from the entire Ileenium system.

“I hear they’re going to start giving Finn solid food,” she says, jerking her head over to the General’s table. Statura hands a spare plate to Nien Nunb, still deep in conversation with the General and Ackbar.

Ackbar makes eye contact for half a second longer than Poe wants.

“Hey,” she says. “What’s up with you today?”

“Why would anything be up?”

She rolls her eyes and picks up the chunk of bread that had been balanced precariously on the side of her plate. A couple crumbs from it fly at his face while she points with it. “Dameron, you’re far from the enigma of the Resistance. If you were any easier to read, your thoughts would be tattooed on your damn forehead.”

The glove over her shoulder shifts to a deeper black, flexes a finger and stretches towards him, closer, and the echo of that rumble starts sharp in his eardrum. Drowns out whatever remark Jessika makes before biting the bread in half.

“Anyway,” she sighs. “Why don’t you go get that plate from Nien and take the food to Finn yourself? He’s your guy, after all.” And he must make a face, something more than the twitch he feel at the corner of his lips, because she quickly adds, “What’s that for?”

“I’m _fine!_ ” he says, drawing it out, trying for that easy nonchalant air that isn’t as easy as it once had been. The fatigue sits deep and heavy in his chest and his appetite is all but gone.

When he looks back at the General’s table, the door to the medbay is swinging shut behind Nien Nunb’s head.

 

* * *

  

Kylo Ren took a meandering path in Poe’s mind on the way to finding where he had hidden the map. That gloved hand reaching toward his face never touched him, but he could feel the fingers digging into his temples, pressing out behind his eyes, sliding between every groove in his brain as his thoughts and memories were examined. Carefully flicked aside. 

Occasionally Ren lingered, despite his claims of this being an urgent matter, of being in a hurry. The night as a child when Poe first heard the story of how the Empire fell: Ren circled back there a number of times, pausing on the third-person view of Poe’s bright, youthful, enamored eyes drinking in the mythos of Luke Skywalker’s one in a million shot to the Death Star, the daring feats of a clunker freighter ship flying beside the x-wing squadron. His mother could tell the stories beautifully, recreate the techniques they had used while he sat in her lap in the cockpit of their family’s docked ship.

Poe’s neck began to strain from the force with which Ren was yanking him forward. Wounds along his head reopened, just enough for a new bead of blood to trail down his cheekbone.

“This doesn’t have to be so hard,” Ren murmured. “We don’t have to revisit those days when your confidence didn’t come so effortlessly, you know...” 

Ren might not have had to, but he did anyway. 

 _Poe is twelve and Jaspar Senn is his best friend. His neighbor next door since they were toddlers, and when they sit on the ledge over the river their knees touch and it’s scalding. Too hot for the autumn dusk and the sunset and something under Poe’s breastbone curls on itself and burns--_

_Poe is fourteen and spending the night at Jaspar’s house and he can’t sleep and even in the dark the thin lines of Jaspar’s lips are a magnet for light-starved pupils. The other boy’s tight curls frame his face as he snores, and he’s beautiful, Poe knows this, and he also knows he saw Jaspar kissing Alcina behind the cantina that afternoon, so he shouldn’t tell him that he knows this--_

_Poe is twenty and attending Jaspar and Alcina’s wedding. Poe is twenty and one day older and he doesn’t know the name of the man behind him, kissing a line up his neck to his jawbone, but it feels like an offshoot of the light-year-wide smile Jaspar can’t help but give Alcina every time he sees her. An offshoot: of the same origin, the satisfying click as something slides into the place it’s supposed to be, but dimmer. Quieter. Poe reaches around at an awkward angle to the man’s muscled back, desperate to touch there, anywhere, tracing the contours--turns his head to catch the man’s lips on his own. Poe is twenty and two days older and leaving for his service in the Republic’s fleet before sunrise._

His eardrums vibrated lower as Ren doubled his efforts. The taste of copper flooded his mouth.

_Poe is thirty-two and the First Order is landing on Jakku and his ship is damaged and the hammering in his chest has to be ignored. Poe is twenty-nine and fresh from his first Resistance battle and finds his bunk mate Antur once they land, and Antur’s face is a little banged up but beautiful, and when Poe holds his face in his hands, his thumbs brush reverently along an unscathed cheekbone, and the next day and the next month Antur doesn’t speak to him. Poe is thirty-two and hurriedly yelling instructions for BB-8 while fire overtakes the village. Poe is twenty-nine and two months older and his actions in the battle were reckless, get him sat down in front of General Organa and Admiral Statura for an official reprimand._

_Poe is thirty-two and fishing for something in his pocket as blasters tear the villagers apart._

_Poe is twenty-nine and two months older and after Admiral Statura leaves, General Organa tells him he helped win the battle. To be less of a daredevil in the future, but only a bit, because there’s talent there, where she points at his breastbone._

_Poe is thirty-two and giving the map to BB-8._

Ren left with an overly-dramatic flash of his cape, and tears pricked at the corners of Poe’s eyes as he swallowed back bile. Willed his head and ears and temples and teeth to stop throbbing.

  

* * *

 

 

The General finds him on the sixteenth night that he hasn’t slept well while he leans against the last corner of Block 5 leading to the medbay, and her hands go straight to her hips. “Aren’t you running drills first thing tomorrow with the new recruits?” 

“I was trying to rework some of them,” he says quickly. Too quickly. “You know, taking into account what we ran into with the Starkiller.” 

This is partly true, despite his clumsy execution. It’s where he let his thoughts come as a distraction as the ghost of Ren’s fingers pulled themselves out of his skull. 

“Sure, okay,” she says with a shrug. “I would tell you to go back to bed, but that would just make me a hypocrite, wouldn’t it?”

Poe opens his mouth to reply but finds there isn’t something that comes to mind that he could say without the risk of immediate regret--for as long as he’s served under her command and gotten used to the presence and power that looms far taller than her physical stature, he can’t say that he isn’t still somewhat intimidated by her.

“Just received an update from Rey,” she says. “They found him.” A thin smile crawls across her face, fades just as slowly. “She didn’t say if they’ve told him about Han yet, but I can guess he figured it out when Chewie and the Falcon showed up without him. He’s not that dense,” she adds under her breath.

“How is he?” he asks.

“Didn’t say.”  And the period there is so final and heavy that he can actually hear the subject drop with a thud. “Finn’s been asking for you, by the way.” A pause--“I’ll have Jessika and Nien run the drills tomorrow. Help your friend. And get some sleep.”

 

* * *

 

 

Finn’s dressed in some medbay scrubs about two sizes too big for him and Poe’s old jacket, and the smile Poe catches from him as soon as he rounds the corner reminds him of home.

“Hey, buddy,” he says. Claps him lightly on the shoulder, angled away from the healing lightsaber scar. “You look good.”

“It’s probably just the jacket. Still feel like crap.”

“It’s not just the jacket.” He ducks his head down, looks for a chair to pull up by Finn’s bedside, and his face is on fire and his heart stutters in his chest and--“You’re healing well.” 

They sit beside each other in silence. It’s peaceful, the lack of shouting and running around and spitting of blasters, but too many questions sit perched at the back of Poe’s throat. He wants to know everything about Finn, and the question crawls forward before hitting the wall of-- _don’t bring up the First Order_. Jessika was right earlier. He wasn’t the enigma of the Resistance: it’s Finn, it couldn’t have been anyone _but_ Finn. Were stormtroopers allowed to have a favorite food, or to listen to music, or read; did they tell each other about their weird dreams in the breakfast line, did they have friends in their battalion ranks, what did they talk about? _Who are you, tell me everything, the one man who turned in the sea of white and stripped down to the black body glove, threw the smothering helmet aside and said this is my face, I am not a number, I will not be your number_ \--

Poe thinks about the places he flown to and the people he’s met, that maybe there’s a story there to share to break the silence; but the silence is comfortable, and why break a thing that doesn’t need to be in a hundred separate pieces?

“Where do I fit in with all this?” Finn says finally.

“Where do you want to fit in?”

“I--” Finn swallows, and Poe watches his Adam’s apple bob, his jaw clench. The quick couple of blinks before he continues, “General Organa’s said what I know about the First Order is useful in intelligence and strategy, but--” His mouth pulls to one side, and he looks Poe square in the eye. “I liked flying with you--and Rey. Can you teach me how to fly an x-wing?”

“Of course,” and he says it almost before Finn can even finish asking, and he knows he should probably check with the General, or at least one of the lieutenants, but how can he say no?

To be allowed to want, a freedom so new--Poe knows, he knows, he can’t say no,  he won’t let them tell Finn no.

 

* * *

 

 

The morning that Finn is finally released from the medical bay, Poe makes himself sit and eat breakfast like he would have any other day before his mission to Jakku--not beside Finn’s cot, not bringing him the nicest cup of fruit or snagging a few extra pieces of toast. Downing his first cup of coffee to hurry on to the second, the one to savor, and making faces at Jessika when she inevitably judged him on his eating habits.

Or other things, depending on the day. 

“Snap and Nien Nunb are a disaster leading drills,” she says. “Sure, they’re fantastic pilots, but--I would say ‘you should see them,’ but I know you’ll never _actually_ see them, considering…” 

She smiles, but mostly at the corners of her eyes, which Poe knows is code for a thousand things he still hasn’t managed to decipher. He’s only halfway through his first cup of coffee after fifteen minutes and of course she’s noticed--sighing, she drops her chin into her hand, and it would be comical were the circumstances what they had been used to. 

“I just can’t believe the General agreed!” she says, the thick swaths of wistfulness laden with sarcasm. “But who can say not to that face of yours?” 

“He wants to fly, so I’m teaching him to fly.” 

“Our trainees come in with at _least_ a couple years of experience under their belt. How long did it take you to convince her to say yes?”

A smile and shrug--noncommittal, implying a better story than the truth, which is that it didn’t take long at all. The reasoning behind her quick go-ahead wasn’t clear, though her justifications rarely are. 

“And you _have_ to be the teacher?” A crease has started to deepen along her forehead since the General split drill leader duties. “Snap’s a great mentor--” 

Which--he is. Snap knows how to explain the complicated controls on ships the Resistance pulls from scrapyards on reconnaissance missions and just the right angle for an elbow to the ribs to boost morale. Endless patience with the proper balance of welcoming and intimidation to bring a new pilot up to standards.

“Jess,” Poe says lightly. “I was given specific instructions…”

Which he wasn’t. The looks from the General have become less sharp during the day and less present as the clock winds closer to sunrise in the dark, but only because he doesn’t see them himself. Maybe she thinks he’s sleeping better--which he hasn’t--and chalks it up to Finn’s improving health.  

Sometimes he can catch a few hours slumped over in the hard chair beside Finn’s cot and sometimes he can’t, but it’s better than the clunking pipes in the walls beside his bunk and he can lay a soft hand on Finn’s shoulder when he starts to squirm with a nightmare. 

“It’s all red,” Finn says once when he wakes with a start. Poe’s hand is on his shoulder, gripping with just the pads of his fingers, and Finn shifts into the touch. “And I can’t breathe.” 

 _The white-hot red of a lightsaber down your back or the dried dark streaks across your helmet?_ \--the question sits unanswered, just like he wants it. Poe doesn’t even want the question gathering dust in his head. He wants it gone, wants the blankness back in Finn’s sleep, wants to scrub the color red from the spectrum.

“You know…” And Jessika points her fork across the table at him, leaning into her elbow propped on the table. “I’ve never seen you spend so much time in the medbay of your own free will.” Her smirk is lighthearted but pointed, the same look he’s seen her shoot across the room at the new nurse with the braids tight against the nape of her neck, Outer Rim booze flowing freely from dented kegs in the corner.

It’s not a look that, in this context, Poe wants to think too carefully about.

 

* * *

 

 

Finn sits in the cockpit of Poe’s T-70. His thumbs run up and down the controls, and even with the slight breeze, Poe’s hair is starting to stick wetly along his hairline. 

He explains everything: the different displays, all the buttons and knobs--Jessika and C-3PO had fixed the simulator a few weeks ago, and they’re heading there after lunch, but the simulator doesn’t offer anything close to the smooth rush of the blaster trigger under your palm. _This is where you’re heading_ , he tries to say.   _Up past the clouds to defy the empty vacuum that seeks to deny your right to be_. 

“When did you learn to fly?” Finn asks suddenly. 

The sweat goes cold on Poe’s face, as cold as it can without freezing. “Before I could remember. My mother taught me,” he adds with a warm smile.

“Well, I bet she’s real proud of you, _best pilot in the Resistance_.”

She would be. In the few times he’s been back to Yavin 4, it seems like his father’s managed to say it to him a hundred times each visit, gripping Poe’s face with his callused hands. Behind the treeline of their home, Poe could see the top edge of the old Rebel Alliance base roof, the tendrils of vines starting to weave into the concrete. Just like Endor, his father would say. But that’s all he would ever say about Endor without Shara. _When you’re older, sweetheart_ , she said when he was nine, and then he was ten and eleven and twelve and his father was so alone. 

Across the squadron yard, mechanics and pilots start to stream back inside for lunch, but the noisy chatter doesn’t pull Finn’s gaze from the track between the controls and Poe’s face. Finn’s face is bright and wide with his grin crinkling the corners of his eyes, and Poe senses his own heart growing dangerous in his ribcage. Burning hot, ready to collapse and burst into a star like the one that chased the tails of their squadron escaping the ashen remains of the Starkiller. 

And Finn’s stomach grumbles, and he catches on to the time and the migration to the cafeteria, and when he moves ahead of Poe after stepping down from the ship, he links their arms together and pulls him into the line that’s formed outside the door. The crooks of their elbows pressed together is warm and overwhelming in a completely different way from the noon sun bearing down through the clouds. 

Jessika smiles at him suggestively from the other side of the throng, but Poe doesn’t let the eye contact linger.

“Simulator after we eat?” Finn asks, and when Poe nods, he adds, “When was the last time you were home?”

There was a final trip up in his mother’s ship after the diagnosis, but Poe didn’t know that, the finality of it, not at the time. His mother’s hands were shaky on the controls and they edged right over the thick cloud cover that had settled in before sunrise--the tops of the clouds glowed a blinding yellow with the tips of the old Massassi pyramids breaking up the scene, little stone islands in the sky. He sat on her lap, legs loosely wrapped around the main steering controls. “You’re going to be better than me, someday,” she had said. Too quietly. As if she’d been talking to herself. And he rested the back of his small head against her breastbone as she steered back towards their home where his father was waiting with dinner.

“It was a long time ago,” he says eventually, and Finn only tugs his arm closer.

The crooks of their elbows burns like a Yavin summer, and if Finn were to ask him again he doesn’t know if he would answer the same way.

 

* * *

 

 

Finn moves into his room, takes the bottom bunk, so when Poe jolts awake sweating at two in the morning, he climbs down the side of the bed slowly, pausing every time the old metal frame whines under his weight. Finn doesn’t stir, which he’s glad for.

There’s no one to hover for in the medbay anymore, but his feet still take him there. He doesn’t cross the threshold, just standing on the balls of his feet, teetering against the invisible barrier and the soft blinking lights of the machines on low power.

The people he cares about don’t usually come back from medbay upright and on their own two feet.

He’s waiting for the second jolt, the rude kick at the back of his knees to find Jessika jostling his shoulder, _you’re going to miss Finn’s memorial service if you don’t get up_. But it doesn’t come--instead the General’s voice echoes from down the hall, “Go back to bed, Dameron.”

 

* * *

  

“You know why we get along so well?” 

He’s camped in front of the coffee after gulping down his third cup--because sleep never came back to him after General Organa tailed him back to his room to be sure he followed her orders--and stirring in the right amount of sugar for the fourth that he would actually have with his breakfast is a complicated process when every blink stings with fatigue. Jessika’s voice seems louder than usual, almost as if he were nursing a hangover instead of the insomnia woven into his pillowcase.

“I mean,” she shrugs, grabbing two round fruits from the basket. “Besides the obvious.”

“And what’s that?” he asks. He fights the weariness in his muscles and forces up a grin as she follows him to their usual table.

“For one--” She waves a slice of the first fruit towards his nose. “Ne’er-do-wrong nice guy with the sarcastic asshole, that always works out well. You always watch my six and I don’t judge you for your caffeine addiction--” 

“Hey--”

“But most importantly, Poe Dameron,” she says, her voice dipping down to a near-whisper. “We’re by far the gayest people on this base.”

He blinks a couple of times--this isn’t news, not to her at least, so he searches for a reason for her to bring it up, and the effort pulls his mouth into a frown over his coffee. 

“Sometimes I forget, you know. Especially with all the guys cracking jokes about how _Dameron is married to the sky and doesn’t believe in divorce_ , yadda yadda. But then at times like yesterday, hoo boy, do I remember.”

She talks at him in her low voice, conveniently falling silent when Statura and Nien Nunb shuffle past or the night shift guards trudge back toward their bunks. And he doesn’t really listen. It’s all the same spiel from the last three, four times:

_Even I can tell you’re the best-looking man on this base, why wouldn’t he like you?_

_I know it’s your choice but this isn’t Yavin 4, you don’t have to hide if you don’t want to. I sure as fuck don’t._

_Do you need me to do recon, because I can do recon--I’ll prove I’m fucking right, okay, you’re gonna get laid and be happy if it’s the last thing I do in this system._

But it isn’t that easy nor is it that simple.

Finn makes his stomach swoop and his chest constrict and the back of his ears burn hot, but that’s not important in the long view of things. It’s not important when the First Order is still out there, and the Republic is beginning to wither after one key system was shot down out of the sky like it was nothing. Poe’s heard the stories about Alderaan--not from the General, always tight-lipped about her home planet, but his father had spoken late into the night about the fear that rippled through the village seeing a planet burst into an asteroid field, never mind five. The rain had been heavy, and as he spoke, Kes Dameron rubbed at an old blaster scar on his thigh that tended to twinge with the weather and with mentions of friends who had been left under knots of vines on Endor or in the dissipated fires on the surface of imperial star destroyers.

How can he let himself be distracted, _preoccupied_ , when there is too much fighting to keep the galaxy from spinning? When he has the blaster trigger under his thumb to help ensure these decades of resistance wouldn’t be in vain?

And Finn--the time that it’ll take to build an identity for himself after the life he’s had to lead--

“I know, okay, but it’s not the right time, Jessika,” he says finally.

“It’s never the right time with you,” she sighs. “You don’t have to live like a damn martyr, you know.” She moves to stand up, but he grabs her wrist.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ll humor you and spell it out.” Behind her, Snap starts to walk towards their table but notices the set of her shoulders and  opts for an empty table beside Ackbar. “You deny yourself everything but the missions with the highest chance of getting yourself killed. It’s not all on you to do that, best pilot in the Resistance or not.”

As she leaves, Finn shuffles into the cafeteria rubbing a crick out of his neck and meets her pointed stare with a brow knit in confusion. “What’s up with Jess this morning?” He falls into her seat with a careful plop and  immediately starts picking at the remaining half of a pastry he clearly knows Poe isn’t going to finish.

“Hasn’t slept well lately, I think.”

“Must be contagious.” He pauses innocently. “You’re not that sneaky, man.”

His words are ribbing but his eyes are soft and deep brown, the shade of the trees on Yavin at dusk after a rain, and the splotch of heat spreading outward from Poe's breastbone radiates down his arm to his hand, the molten core of him, where Finn has lightly placed his own hand. (And is his thumb stroking along the side, is he imagining things--)

“Go take a nap,” he says. “A couple hours of missed training isn’t going to hurt.”

Poe nods, and no he wasn’t imagining Finn’s thumb, and he feels his cheeks start to glow violently red. When he turns to leave, the eye contact he shares with Finn is stuttering on both ends; when he climbs to his bunk and wills himself to rest, sleep doesn’t come, his heart aping the hammer of drums.

 

* * *

  

They train. General Organa hides the long letters she receives from Rey--and maybe Luke, too--in the scores of files on her computer, clicking away from them as soon as she hears anyone step too close, but not quickly enough.  

They train. Poe watches BB-8 roll enthusiastically after R2-D2 while C-3PO bumbles after them, complaining about one thing or another, often giving R2 a sharp smack but resorting to huffy muttering when BB-8 draws wide circles around his feet. Finn laughs and it’s Poe’s favorite sound in the galaxy.

They train, and finally Finn gets the green light from the General to take an x-wing in the air after Poe casually slides his simulator scores under her nose at dinner one evening, and they have to push the seat as far back as it will go to accommodate the two of them. Finn sits in front, all hands on the controls with Poe looking over his shoulder. They skim the top of the D’Qar treeline running solo drills, and landing is only a tad more jolting than it should be, but the room for improvement is so slim. Snap and Jessika are waiting at the airfield, whooping loudly when they emerge from the cockpit.

Finn joins them, smile stretching his face, arms extended to the sky he just claimed as his own, and now Poe has two favorite sounds vying for the top spot. Poe saddles up beside them and Finn grabs him in a one-armed hug around his waist, high off the adrenaline. _Yes_ , the one word pumps through his heart and down his veins, and his own arm wraps around Finn’s shoulder and he tries to avoid looking Jessika in the face.

They keep training. They have meetings on the First Order activity creeping closer to Coruscant, reports of TIE fighters navigating the Alderaan asteroid field. The General’s jaw clenches tighter than normal. Occasionally an officer will ask about Luke and the meeting will abruptly end.

At night, tired to his bones, Finn drifts in and out of sleep, head balanced on Poe’s shoulder as he continues whatever he was saying in a slurred murmur. 

Poe wants to let himself want this without the guilt lining his ribs like lead. Weighing him down, away from Finn’s warm hands, the small flick of his tongue as he licks at the bit of orange pulp in the corner of his lips at breakfast. He wants and he wants and the small voice in his head is sharp and reprimanding-- _you are part of something bigger, you cannot want this, you cannot put him in danger by spotlighting him as your weakness. This is not your path_.

In the mornings, he and Snap watch Jessika lead the physical drills with the newer pilots, Finn now among their ranks, and Snap elbows him in the side. “She told me to tell you you’re being an idiot. Again,” he adds. “What’s this about?” 

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I mean, I’m not, but if our best pilot is being an idiot, that’s some cause for concern--”

“I thought you said you weren’t worried?” Poe tries for a smile, and maybe it works because Snap rolls his eyes with a mirror of it, motioning over to where Finn leads the pack jogging behind Jessika around the airfield.

“When do you think he’s going to be ready?”

 _Never_ \--but that’s a lie. A kneejerk reaction trapped on a bitten tongue. At the rate he’s going, Finn could join the squadron in a battle within a month and a half once his scores on battle drills improve, but the talk of an attack on the First Order troops on Coruscant has grown louder, and the thought of Finn’s voice crackling in his ear over the comms, green bullets whizzing towards the neon target on his defector’s heart--Poe’s knees lock and part of his breakfast crawls up the back of his throat. 

But he would do great, he reminds himself, he would be beautiful in that x-wing, and he would come back with Poe in one piece, hardly a scratch on him and with a swell of victory in his chest. 

“Soon,” Poe says after a few moments. “But not yet.”

“Obviously.”

“Yeah… obviously,” he echoes.

Finn shoots him a grin from across the cracked tarmac, bright as the red giants Poe has flown past in the deep core of the galaxy.

 

* * *

 

 

Coruscant goes to shit fast but they all make it home without a single TIE fighter following their retreat back to the Ileenium system. Jessika’s x-wing is hobbling the most out of all of them, one engine about to give out at it splutters back to earth, and Poe knows he has a nasty nosebleed after his cockpit’s pressure stabilization system started malfunctioning. He glances down, and there’s a large smear of it down the left side of his pilot’s vest, turning brown against the orange of the flight suit. But he’s fine--they’re all fine, and there will be time to recuperate and regroup and readjust strategy but now, now-- 

Jessika is conspiring with Nien Nunb on where Admiral Ackbar hides his liquor--“Mon Calamari has the strongest stuff in the Outer Rim, Dameron, everyone knows this”--and Snap is briefing the mechanics and their astrodroids on where the most serious damage is and which fighters are fit to catch fire the next time someone hits the ignition. Through the flurry of people Poe can see the General massaging her temple, raising her eyebrow in a subtle beckoning that he’s come to recognize. 

“I can offer a full report--”

“Dameron, just get to the medbay before you lose more blood than you already have,” she says firmly. “There will be time for that later.” 

He breaks from the crowd, and with everyone outside with the returned squadron, the base is eerily silent. A few beeps emanate from the hall to the medbay, so at least the droids are on duty, and he pushes through the door, careful not to smear the last bits of fresh blood on the handle-- 

“ _Poe._ ” 

Finn is a blur, all browns and a flash of red from Poe’s old jacket as he jumps from his seat and across the room, grabbing Poe’s face in his hands and kissing him--

 _Kissing him_ \-- 

And just as soon as his rattled brain puts the pieces together, it’s over. Finn is still holding his face, thumbs caressing the skin by the corners of his eyes, and Poe swears he can feel Finn’s heartbeat rocketing against his cheek through the thin skin at his wrists.

“I couldn’t sit in the situation room after it started to get bad, I got so scared--what if they captured you again or they shot you down and--I had to leave, I couldn’t… sit there and listen to you die--but you didn’t die, you’re here now. Right? I’m not dreaming this, right?” 

Out of breath, Finn searches Poe’s face and Poe searches right back, exhales in a single quiet laugh and feels a new dribble of blood drip from his nose. 

“You’re bleeding but you’re smiling,” Finn says quickly. “I’m not sure what to do with that--” 

“You kissed me.”

And Finn pauses like it’s a revelation before settling back into the resolute stare with a gravity Poe doesn’t know how to handle. “I did. I did do that.” 

It’s a gravity Poe can’t resist, because he wraps his hand around the back of Finn’s neck and pulls him down and the small noise Finn makes is Poe’s newest favorite sound in the galaxy, and maybe he should just simplify the list, just put Finn’s name at the top and call it a day. But he can’t think about that now: Finn’s hands are in his hair and their lips are moving together, their lips are _touching_ , his skin is on fire, and he _wants_. He wants and the lead is leaking away.

“You have to come back,” Finn murmurs as they back against the wall, tripping over the wires of the machines. “You can’t leave me and not come back.” 

“I didn’t,” Poe says in the space between Finn’s lips. “I won’t.” 

“Promise me,” Finn whispers, and he kisses Poe again--slowly, intently, tongue inching past his lips in a maddening way Poe didn’t even realize he would know how to do.

“You promise _me_ ,” he says, and they’re both gasping for breath, reaching and gripping along back and skulls for the best hold to keep the other there, away from the deadly black of space. “You promise me the same--”

Finn’s arms wrap up his back. An anchor. The frenzied thrumming under his skin from the battle quiets and Poe will come home.  He will come home, and this, of all things, is not a weakness.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also [here](http://santiagoinbflat.tumblr.com) if that suits your fancy.


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